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« «
THE FIRST CENTURY OF THE
A M E R I C A N C O L L E G E , 16 3 6 –­1 74 0
H
H A R VA R D C O L L E G E
igher educat ion in B r it ish N o rt h A m er i c a
was conceived on October 28, 1636, when the Great and General
Court of Massachusetts Bay “agreed to give 400£ towards a schoale or colledge.” Despite the ambiguity of this wording, there is no
doubt that the Puritan leaders intended to provide education comparable to that of Oxford and Cambridge, with which they were
familiar. Provision had already been made for a preparatory grammar or Latin
school in Boston; the new founding was intended for “instructing youth of riper
years and literature after they came from grammar schools.” This relatively generous appropriation triggered a train of events that led to the erection of Harvard
College and its first commencement 6 years later, in 1642.1 However, the path
was far from easy.
Further steps were taken late in 1637 when the Court directed that the college be located at Newtown and added “that Newetowne shall henceforward be
called Cambrige.”2 It confided the responsibility for the college to a “committee”
of six magistrates and six ministers—­who soon became the Board of Overseers.
Newtown had grown rapidly in the early 1630s and even functioned briefly as
the capital. But its first settlers found the area too cramped and left in 1636 for
Connecticut.
The college was intended to uphold orthodox Puritanism, as interpreted by
the General Court, the governors of the colony, and this consideration seems
to have played a role in placing it in Newtown. Religious controversy was present from the start. The Colony had been shaken that same year by what was
deemed heretical teachings by Anne Hutchinson. In increasingly popular
1 The following draws upon Samuel Eliot Morison, The Founding of Harvard College (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1935) and Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1936). Quotes, Founding of Harvard, 168, 449. These works are summarized in Three
Centuries of Harvard (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936).
2 Morison, Founding of Harvard, 188.
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CHAPTER 1
discussion groups she had advocated a more severe, antinomian version of Calvinism, which meant stricter criteria for determining who belonged to the elect
and hence qualified for full church membership. This approach threatened the
governance of both churches and the General Court. Reverend Thomas Shepard of Newtown played a prominent role in opposing Hutchinson’s views when
she was tried and ultimately banished. The fact that Shepard was named to the
overseeing committee and that the college was placed next to his dwelling would
seem to be linked with his role in this controversy. Producing ministers with the
proper interpretation of Puritanism was understood to be the mission of the
new college.
Finding qualified leaders for the college was a challenge throughout the seventeenth century. The ministers of existing congregations were committed by
covenant to remain with their congregations, making newcomers the most likely
candidates at first. In the summer of 1637 Nathaniel Eaton arrived with some
attractive credentials. He was just 27 years old, and his older brother had helped
to organize the Massachusetts Bay Company. Although he had dropped out of
Trinity College, Cambridge, he subsequently studied at the Dutch University of
Franeker with William Ames, the Puritan’s most revered theologian. Considered
a “rare scholar” for having written a tract on observation of the Sabbath, Eaton
was named master and charged with launching the college. He seems to have
begun instructing about ten first-­year students in the summer of 1638. The little
that is known of this initial effort is all bad. Eaton routinely whipped his charges,
and his wife failed to provide them with adequate beef and beer. The overseers
were apparently blind to these practices, but when he savagely beat an assistant,
the whole fiasco came to light. Eaton was tried and dismissed but still managed
to abscond with some college funds. The college closed after just 1 year of operation, and students returned to their homes.
Before this tumult, John Harvard had taken an interest in the inchoate college. A graduate of Emmanuel College, Harvard probably crossed over on the
same ship as Eaton and undoubtedly visited the new college. When he succumbed to consumption shortly after the college opened, he bequeathed it half
of his estate and his entire library. Six months later, a grateful General Court ordered “that the colledge agreed upon formerly to bee built at Cambridg shalbee
called Harvard Colledge.”3 But the college still awaited a teacher.
Its needs were met when Henry Dunster arrived in August 1640. A Bachelor
and Master (1634) of Magdalene College, Cambridge, who had preached and
taught in England, Dunster consented to become the first president of Harvard
College just 3 weeks after disembarking—­“a meer stranger in the Country,” in
3 Ibid., 221.
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T H E A M E R I C A N C O L L E G E , 16 3 6 – 174 0
his words.4 Reassembling the students almost immediately, he was responsible
not only for shepherding them through to the commencement of 1642 but for
organizing enduring forms of teaching, living, and governance.
Dunster originally established a 3-­year course of study for the AB degree,
loosely modeled on those of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges. The major
components were philosophy (logic, ethics, and politics), the classical languages
and literature, and other subjects suitable for a gentleman’s education in the arts.
Latin and Greek had quite different roles. Latin was the language of instruction
and communication, so that students had to be able to read, write, and speak it
as a condition for admission. Beginning students needed only a basic grounding
in Greek grammar since this proficiency was developed in all 3 years. Students
began by emphasizing logic in order to develop a facility for the disputations that
were central to the arts course. Each class devoted one day per week to rhetoric,
which prepared students for the flourishes of oratory known as declamations.
Saturdays were devoted to divinity. The original Dunster course included Oriental languages (Hebrew and a smattering of Chaldean and Syriac), his specialty,
as well as single terms that addressed history, botany, physics, astronomy, and
geometry. After a decade, Dunster felt compelled to extend the course to 4 years,
like the AB course in England. The fact that the additional year was appended to
the beginning of the course and was used for honing skills in Latin and Greek,
suggests weak student preparation.
Several aspects of the original Harvard course are notable. First, it was meant
to convey a liberal education in the arts for the first degree. Despite the intense
piety of the Puritans, the arts were considered essential to the culture of an educated gentleman. Future clergymen were expected to earn a second degree, the
master of arts, by reading divinity for 3 years, whether in the college or elsewhere.
But the paucity of resources in seventeenth-­century Massachusetts made it difficult for most students to complete their education. Second, the course provided a largely literary education. Scientific subjects were only touched upon,
in a manner that did not yet reflect the intellectual advances of the seventeenth
century. Mathematics was confined to arithmetic and geometry in the last year.
The corpus of knowledge transmitted at Harvard College was considered fixed,
and inquiry after new knowledge was beyond imagining. Third, in spite of the
static conception of knowledge, the pedagogy demanded what today would be
called active learning. Students studied their texts, kept notebooks to organize
this knowledge, and copied key concepts or phrases for future use in declamations or disputations. These latter two exercises occupied significant parts of
the week for all classes, and performance in these exercises largely determined a
4 Ibid., 448.
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CHAPTER 1
student’s standing. Finally, the graduation protocols provided both accountability and a capstone experience as the commencers publicly “demonstrated their
proficiency in the tongues and the arts” with declamations and disputations that
addressed previously publicized “theses and quaestiones.”5
Harvard’s first commencement in 1642 consecrated the initial success of
Dunster’s efforts. In an impressive ceremony, the governor, magistrates, ministers and other educated citizens endured a full day of Greek and (mostly) Latin
presentations. Nine students who had begun their studies under Nathaniel
Eaton were awarded the first degree of bachelor of arts. It is often noted that the
college had no authority to award degrees, since it lacked a royal charter. However, Harvard degrees had the backing of the colony, which created the college as
one component of its self-­sufficient existence. Given the universal nature of the
arts course and President Dunster’s qualifications as a master, Harvard degrees
were soon recognized elsewhere as well.6
The commencement also marked the public debut of the college building.
This structure allowed the students, who had been “dispersed in the town and
miserably distracted,” to be united in the “collegiate way of living.”7 The graduates of Cambridge and Oxford who organized the college viewed this arrangement as essential for a college of arts: teachers and scholars living together under
a common discipline and sharing in meals, chambers, prayers, and recreation—­a
kind of total immersion in a setting devoted to learning. The building itself soon
came to be known as the Old College. A four-­story wooden open quadrangle,
shaped like an E, it was so poorly designed and constructed that it required constant repairs and lasted fewer than 40 years.8 The first floor contained a large
hall where the entire college assembled for prayers, meals, and college exercises,
as well as rooms for storing, preparing, and serving food. The library was on the
second floor. Student chambers were scattered throughout, mostly on the upper
stories. Students lived three or four to a chamber, which also contained individual cubicles as studies.
In 1650 Dunster was able to solidify the governance of the college by obtaining a charter of incorporation from the General Court. The eminent Overseers
could seldom be gathered for college business, so the Charter of 1650 established
5 “Theses are propositions on the several liberal Arts and other subjects studied in the undergraduate course, which any member of the graduating class, if challenged, was supposed to be able to defend,
in Latin, by the recognized rules of syllogistic disputation . . . . The quaestiones were defended or opposed
by candidates for the Master’s degree, at Masters’ Commencement on the afternoon of Commencement
Day”: Harvard College, 580.
6 Morison, Founding of Harvard, 257–­62.
7 Ibid., 448.
8 Bainbridge Bunting, Harvard: An Architectural History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1985), 5–­12.
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T H E A M E R I C A N C O L L E G E , 16 3 6 – 174 0
a corporation, consisting of the president, treasurer, and five fellows, to be responsible for the affairs of the college and particularly its finances. The Overseers
remained as a second, dominant external board, with responsibility to approve
the actions of the Corporation. Dunster no doubt envisioned active teaching
fellows filling out the Corporation. However, because the college could support only two such positions in the seventeenth century, outside ministers were
enlisted. Whether the fellows should be instructors or external representatives
would be a future bone of contention. The Charter of 1650 has endured as the
basis for governing Harvard, the oldest continuous corporation in the Western
Hemisphere.
Dunster resigned the presidency in 1654 under circumstances that exposed
the realities of college governance perhaps better than the charter. He was first
disturbed by the General Court’s assertion of authority over the college. When
Dunster had complained of insufficient funds, the court ordered a review of all
income and expenditures. The resulting report found no wrongdoing on Dunster’s part, but the court nevertheless affirmed the Overseers’ authority over the
corporation in financial matters. Dunster doubtless had assumed that his charter
accorded greater powers to the president and corporation, and he complained
of this slight in his letter of resignation. However, it was a theological matter
that made his position untenable. Dunster had become convinced that there was
no scriptural justification for infant baptism. The notion that baptism should
signify adult religious commitment was a heresy associated with Anabaptists,
who were outlawed in the Colony and banished to Rhode Island. Dunster could
have retained the presidency had he kept his beliefs to himself, but he would not
suppress what he held (with Biblical justification) to be truth. The court finally
reacted by announcing that no one should teach in school or college who “manifested themselves unsound in the faith.”9 Given the Reformation melding of
state, church, and college, Dunster had to go. But the problem of the state determining what was sound or unsound in the faith was not so easily dismissed—­as
subsequent developments would show.
When Dunster withdrew in 1654 he left a flourishing, if impecunious, college
of about fifty students. Harvard degrees were recognized in England, and its students hailed from New England and beyond. In just 15 years Dunster had created
the fully functioning arts college that the Puritan founders had envisioned. Yet it
had already assumed distinctive American features. The collegiate way of living
was sparer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but in some ways more intense. Students thrown together with their classmates for 4 years developed lasting bonds,
9 Harvard College, 302–­14; Jurgen Herbst, From Crisis to Crisis: American College Government,
1636–­1819 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 10–­18.
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CHAPTER 1
so that the class became a stronger source of identity in America than in England. Tutors turned over rapidly given their meager stipends, so that the president dominated teaching in the American college. And, while Oxbridge colleges
enjoyed endowments and a significant degree of autonomy, Harvard emanated
from a self-­defined community that expected to both support and control the
institution.
Dunster was replaced by the learned but elderly Charles Chauncy (1654–­
1672), who provided solid if uninspired leadership until his death at age 80. The
difficulties facing Chauncy and Harvard were not of his making. The outbreak
of the English Civil War in 1640 had brought the dissenters to power. With an
end to persecution, Puritans were no longer driven to emigrate to the Bay Colony. The absence of newcomers and new money brought the economy near to
collapse. The dearth of new settlements also shrunk the need for new ministers.
Instead, Puritan rule in England during the 1650s under the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell generated a huge demand for Puritan ministers there. A reverse
migration took place that chiefly attracted the young and the educated. Reverend Richard Mather of Dorchester, for example, saw three of his four Harvard-­
educated sons take parishes in England and only the youngest, Increase, return
to Massachusetts after the Restoration.10 As the constituency of Harvard evolved
from first-­generation immigrants to indigenous families, educational aspirations
waned. College enrollments fell by half during Chauncy’s tenure; graduates fell
to five or six per year (and none in 1672), and fewer bachelors completed the
master’s degree. These relative doldrums persisted until the 1680s. By then a pattern for seventeenth-­century Harvard was set.
Roughly 300 students attended Harvard under Dunster and Chauncy (1640–­
1672), and almost 200 of them graduated. In the next 35 years the college enrolled
about 360 students, most of them after 1690, when class size grew to around 15.11
Dunster’s students were distinctive in being the sons of English exiles, if not exiles
themselves. Sons of ministers or magistrates were a majority, and the rest came
from gentry families. These classes contained a number of older students, as well
as students from England and other colonies. Under Chauncy, however, Harvard
quickly became a New England institution. The ministerial connection, unsurprisingly, was central to both recruitment and careers. Almost one-­quarter of
Harvard students were sons of Harvard-­trained ministers. But, overall only about
two-­thirds of students came from gentry or college-­educated fathers. Included in
this group were a few fellow-­commoners, as at Oxbridge, who paid double tui10 Michael G. Hall, The Last Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan
University Press, 1981), 41–­48.
11 Morison, Harvard College, 70–­80, 448–­52.
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T H E A M E R I C A N C O L L E G E , 16 3 6 – 174 0
tion and dined with the fellows and resident bachelors, a practice that continued
into the early eighteenth century. Still, it seems remarkable that one-­third of students came from the common people of New England. One reason for this may
have been the availability of schooling. Samuel Eliot Morison found the largest
numbers of students hailing from, respectively, Boston, Cambridge, I­ pswich, and
Roxbury—­towns that maintained grammar schools in the same order of size.
Other students would typically have been prepared individually by local ministers and even then would face the costs of tuition and living expenses at Harvard.
Total costs for 4 years at Harvard in the seventeenth century approximated 2
years’ income for a common laborer—­not too different from the price of a residential public university education in 2010.12
A professed mission of Harvard College was to educate a learned Puritan
ministry, but the college was never a seminary and always committed to an
arts education. Becoming a minister was the only distinctive “career” existing
in seventeenth-­century New England. More than half of Harvard students entered the ministry until about 1720, but ministerial preparation occurred after
the bachelor’s degree. A few students remained at Harvard to read for the master’s degree, while most apprenticed with local ministers. Entrance into the profession required both acceptance by a congregation and ordination. The large
number of graduates that pursued this demanding route reflects the prominence
of ministers in Puritan society. Conversely, the variety of callings followed by
the remaining graduates suggests mixed rather than fixed occupations. College
graduates by definition assumed the status of gentlemen. As such they were expected to fill public offices in their community (although Harvard graduates
were exempt from military service). Similarly, most probably raised a good portion of their own food and traded goods. Many young graduates spent some time
as teachers, but only a handful became career educators. Fewer than 10 percent
became physicians, as few settlements were large enough to support a medical
doctor. Finally, the law did not become a distinct profession in America until the
middle of the next century.13
In the hierarchical society that the Puritans brought from England, education and property were markers of status. A college education signified high
social status, but also the expectation to play a prominent role in community
or church affairs. The Harvard College curriculum inculcated the culture associated with this status. On one hand, the omnipresence of God and His handiwork
12 Marjory Somers Foster, “Out of smalle Beginnings . . .”: An Economic History of Harvard College
in the Puritan Period (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 83–­84; James Axtell, The School upon
a Hill: Education and Society in Colonial New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 207–­18.
13 Morison, Harvard College, 556–­65; Bailey B. Burritt, “Professional Distribution of College and
University Graduates,” U.S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin No. 19, 1912.
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CHAPTER 1
permeated their intellectual world, and what the Puritans called godliness was
an expected outcome for a college graduate. But learning itself—­the basic arts
curriculum—­was universally recognized as the foundation of the culture of a
gentleman. The polite learning acquired from ancient literature was certainly a
part of this culture. But the College also inculcated a sense of eupraxia (well-­
acting), the Aristotelian notion embedded in Puritan theology that the end of
knowledge is praxis, or knowing how to act.14 This gentleman’s culture was the
implicit content of a Harvard education for ministers as well as laypeople. It permeated status relationships and everyday life in Puritan society. It was explicitly
celebrated on special occasions like Harvard’s annual commencements, where
educated men from throughout the colony gathered to ritually induct graduates
into the culture of gentlemen.
YA L E C O L L E G E
The Puritan settlers of Connecticut were an offshoot of their counterparts at
Massachusetts Bay, and they too felt the need for a college to uphold and perpetuate religion and learning. Hopes of founding a college centered on New Haven,
but the only serious attempt to launch such a school foundered around 1660 for
lack of students or support. The small and dispersed settlements in the colony
frustrated any concerted effort. Instead, aspiring ministers endured the difficult
and expensive trip to Cambridge, where they comprised 12 percent of Harvard
graduates. However, by century’s end conditions finally seemed propitious for
the colony to have a college of its own.
The governor of Massachusetts described Connecticut, circa 1700, as “thirty-­
thousand souls, about thirty-­three towns, all dissenters, supplied with ministers
and schools of their own persuasion.” It was a homogeneous Puritan society in
which church and state functioned as parts of a coordinated whole. Under its
corporate charter the colony enjoyed self-­government with an elected governor
and general assembly. The social and political units were actually the forty-­six
independent church congregations. All residents paid taxes to support the Congregational churches. Ministers took the initiative to launch a college. Led by
James Pierpont of New Haven, ministers from several coastal towns met and
agreed upon the desirability of such an effort. At this juncture the status of the
American colonies was under scrutiny in England. Fearful of taking any step that
14 Morison, Harvard College, 163–­64; Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth
Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 190; Norman Fiering, Moral Philosophy at
Seventeenth-­Century Harvard: A Discipline in Transition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1981), 44–­47.
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T H E A M E R I C A N C O L L E G E , 16 3 6 – 174 0
might disturb Connecticut’s relative autonomy, they sought legal advice about
the possible status and scope of a college. The responses offered cautious encouragement, but recommended a low profile—­giving the “Accademie as low a name”
as possible and the master a title “which shows Least of Grandeur.” With this
timid backing, ten ministers brought the plan to the General Assembly, which
on October 9, 1701, passed “An Act for Liberty to erect a Collegiate School.”15
This entire process was encouraged through an ongoing exchange of letters and advice from conservative Harvardians in Massachusetts. In 1701 the
staunchly Puritan minister and statesman Increase Mather was being forced from
the Harvard presidency (see below), and he and his supporters were eager to see
an alternative school established that would uphold Puritan orthodoxy. Early in
that year an anonymous letter, attributed to his son Cotton, suggested that Connecticut establish a university to be called “The School of the Churches,” with
the pastors of twelve churches serving as external government. In September Increase Mather, no longer president, wrote to provide his encouragement. Interestingly, both Mathers advocated an institution quite different from Harvard.
They envisioned a college entirely controlled by Congregational ministers, who
could be trusted to preserve the “purity of religion.” They rejected the collegiate
way of living in favor of having students room in the town as they did in continental universities. And they condemned the boisterous public commencements
that had become the custom at Harvard and “of late years proved very expensive
& are occasion of much sin.” More direct assistance was provided by Massachusetts Judge Samuel Sewall (H. 1671). Upon request of the Connecticut ministers,
he provided a draft charter for the college. With only slight editing, this was the
document enacted by the General Assembly.16
The charter of the Collegiate School gave its sponsors the authority and
powers needed to found an institution but left other particulars open for the
trustees to determine. The purpose was clear: “the founding, suitably endowing
& ordering of a Collegiate School within his Majesties Colony of Connecticut
wherein Youth may be instructed in the Arts & Sciences who thorough the blessing of Almighty God may be fitted for Publick employment in both Church and
Civil State.” Complete authority over the institution was accorded to ten named
trustees, all senior ministers of the larger colony towns, with the right to name
their successors in perpetuity. The General Assembly granted the new school
an annual grant of £120 country pay (i.e., in kind), and the right to acquire and
15 Richard Warch, School of the Prophets: Yale College, 1701–­1740 (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1973), quotes pp. 41, 25, 24, 30; Brooks Mather Kelley, Yale: A History (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1974), 3–­10.
16 These documents are presented in George Wilson Pierson, The Founding of Yale College: The
Legend of the Forty Folios (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 3–­12.
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CHAPTER 1
own other assets. As for the school itself, the trustees were to hire a rector and
tutors, as well as “grant degrees or Licenses” as they deemed proper. Subsequent
controversy over whether Yale was a public or private institution would invoke
different interpretations of these events. However, for Connecticut Puritans the
churches and civil state were each playing their accustomed roles in adding a
college to the polity.
The trustees wasted no time, gathering in Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut River, only 1 month later to lay the foundation for the school. It was
here, according to venerable Yale legend, that the trustees allegedly pledged their
own books—­some forty folios—­to give the college its first tangible property.17
They designated Saybrook as the provisional locus of the college and named one
of their number, Abraham Pierson of nearby Killingsworth, as rector. Curriculum was not an issue, since all but one of the trustees were Harvard graduates and
well understood that their purpose was to teach the “liberal arts and languages”
and to confer bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Having all attended during the
Chauncy era, they replicated Harvard of the 1650s. This November meeting in
Saybrook marks the true founding of what became Yale College.
The early years of the Collegiate School were disorderly, but the resolve of
the trustees and the general support of the colony preserved a viable and growing enterprise. At the outset, Rector Pierson was unable to secure a release from
his Killingsworth congregation to move to Saybrook, so the students instead
came to him. He began instructing the first student in his home in 1702, and
that same year the school awarded its first degrees, both BA and MA, to an exceptionally well-­prepared student. It thereby asserted its status as a true college
despite its unassuming title. Pierson provided sound leadership and instruction,
although finding satisfactory tutors proved difficult. In the first 5 years of operation, the school enrollment rose to seventeen undergraduates and produced
fourteen graduates. However, when rector Pierson died in 1707, new arrangements had to be made. The college finally moved to Saybrook, but there teaching
was conducted by tutors since, again, no rector could be persuaded to relocate.
The college persisted in Saybrook for 8 years, although in far from satisfactory
conditions. In 1716 the unhappy students dispersed to study with ministers independently, most going to Wethersfield (near Hartford) or New Haven. The
trustees from the Hartford churches then asked the General Assembly to locate
the college there permanently. For a year, students were instructed in three different places—­Wethersfield, New Haven, and a few still in Saybrook. At this point
New Haven made a concerted effort to claim the college and began erecting a
true college building for its new home. The General Assembly finally intervened,
17 For the circumstances and significance, see Pierson, Founding of Yale College.
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T H E A M E R I C A N C O L L E G E , 16 3 6 – 174 0
eventually deciding in favor of New Haven, but both Saybrook and Hartford
contested the decision for another 2 years.
While still in this precarious state, the college had the good fortune to receive a major gift from Elihu Yale, an English Anglican originally from New
England who had grown quite wealthy in the India trade. Cotton Mather had
written to Yale promising him a naming opportunity: “what is forming at New
Haven might wear the name of YALE COLLEGE.” Jeremiah Dummer, a Harvard graduate who was the London agent for Connecticut and Massachusetts,
secured Yale’s donation. Dummer convinced the Anglican Yale to support a
dissenter college since, Yale reasoned, “the business of good men is to spread
religion and learning among mankind without being too fondly attached to particular ­Tenets, about which the World never was, nor ever will be agreed”—­a
sentiment shared by no one connected with the Collegiate School.18 In August,
1718, his donation arrived in Boston: a large box of books, a portrait of King
George I, and goods from the East Indies that sold for more than £500. The new
college building was quickly named for Yale, and soon the institution itself was
called Yale College. By 1720 the Collegiate School had a new name, a permanent
home, and a building for the collegiate way of living. It also obtained a resident
rector for the first time. The Reverend Timothy Cutler was considered one of
the colony’s most effective preachers and just the sort of leader who could discipline the students and overcome the previous fissiparous tendencies.
Yale College thrived in its new home and quickly grew. It averaged twelve
annual graduates in the first half of the 1720s and sixteen in the second half. It
also became somewhat more worldly. Whereas almost three-­quarters of earlier
graduates entered the ministry, that proportion fell to around one-­half from the
1720s onward. Yale was fulfilling its mission of fitting youth for employment in
both church and civil state. However, its parallel mission of upholding the purity
of Puritanism would prove more challenging.
THE COLLEGE OF WILLIAM & MARY
Virginia was chartered in 1606 as a Crown colony with Anglicanism as the established church. Hence, affairs of church and state were legally set in London,
including provisions for education. Only 10 years after Jamestown was settled in
1607, King James asked his subjects to contribute toward “the erecting of some
Churches and Schooles for the education of children of those Barbarians.”19 This
18 Warch, School of the Prophets, quotes p. 85.
19 For Colonial William & Mary, Thad W. Tate, “The Colonial College, 1693–­1782,” in The College
of William & Mary: A History, vol. I (1693–­1888) (Williamsburg: King and Queen Press, 1993), 3–­162;
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CHAPTER 1
initiative blossomed into a plan for a full-­fledged university inland from Jamestown at Henrico. Land was secured, settlers were brought in, and in 1622 a rector was named. Before he could set sail, however, the unappreciative Barbarians
massacred the settlers, and the venture was abandoned. Not until William and
Mary assumed the throne in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 would conditions
in London again be propitious for planting a college in Virginia. That these conditions were exploited to create the College of William & Mary was the single-­
handed accomplishment of an individual who today might be labeled a policy
entrepreneur, James Blair.
Son of a Scottish minister, Blair was educated in the arts and theology at
the University of Edinburgh before assuming his own parish. A liberal Anglican, he was purged from that position for not supporting the Stuart monarchy.
Moving to London, he established good relations with Anglican opponents of
the Stuarts. In 1685 Blair was persuaded to accept a parish in Virginia, which
was always in need of clergy. He apparently distinguished himself among rather
undistinguished peers and also married into a powerful Virginia family. He was
a rising political force within the colony when the Glorious Revolution brought
his patrons to power in London. Blair was appointed commissary, or head of the
Anglican clergy in Virginia, and at his first convocation in 1690 he secured a resolution to establish a college. He soon enlisted the support of the colony and in
1691 traveled to England to secure a royal charter. Nearly 2 years of bureaucratic
wrangling ensued, but in 1693 Blair succeeded in having the monarchs issue a
charter for a college bearing their names.
Certainly the College of William & Mary was less premature than the Henrico venture 70 years earlier, but it was nevertheless created for a land that had
little use for advanced education. Virginia by the 1690s had a dispersed population of large plantations that were growing wealthy through tobacco and
slaves. In many ways still a frontier society, it lacked both towns and schools,
and it had large numbers of unattached and unruly young men. No doubt Blair
and officials in London felt the need for a college so that—­in the words of the
charter—­“the Church of Virginia may be furnished with a Seminary of Ministers of the Gospel, and that the Youth may be piously educated in good Letters
and Manners.” But these were wishful thoughts. Whereas the early colleges of
New England were founded and supported by their communities, the chartering of William & Mary was an act of a distant government. Still, obtaining a
J. David Hoeveler, Creating the American Mind (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 79–­100; Arthur P. Middleton, “Anglican Contributions to Higher Education in Colonial America,” Pennsylvania
History, XXV, 3 ( July, 1958): 49–­66, quote p. 52. Most records of colonial William & Mary were destroyed in successive fires, so there is much uncertainty about many aspects of the college.
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T H E A M E R I C A N C O L L E G E , 16 3 6 – 174 0
royal charter was something of a feat—­unmatched by any other college in the
American colonies.
The college charter specified four levels of instruction—­a grammar school
to teach basic Latin, a school of philosophy in which collegiate subjects would
be taught, and a school of divinity to prepare Anglican ministers. A separate
endowment provided for an Indian school as well. The charter also specified a
faculty of six—­single teachers for the grammar and Indian schools, professors
of moral and natural philosophy, and two professors of divinity. The institution
was to be liberally supported with land grants and shares of various royal revenues. Just as Oxford and Cambridge each elected a member of the House of
Commons, the college could elect a burgess to the Virginia legislature. Initially,
a board of trustees was responsible for the college assets until the terms of the
charter were fulfilled; those powers would then revert to the president and faculty of the college. However, more than 30 years passed before this occurred. In
the meantime, James Blair was in full control. He was named president of the
college for life, which turned out to be 50 years. He also served on the board
of trustees and the Board of Visitors that succeeded it. Unlike northern college
presidents, he never taught in the college. This was but one of many anomalies in
the unique model of the College of William & Mary.
The early years of the college saw three notable accomplishments. First, Blair
succeeded in hiring an able schoolmaster for the grammar school, and instruction
commenced in 1694. Second, with the funds promised for the founding of the
college, an impressive collegiate building was erected over the next 5 years. Third,
as complications grew at the Jamestown settlement, Blair helped arrange the relocation of the colony capital to Williamsburg, close by the college. Twenty-­nine
registered students were reported in 1702, all in the grammar school, but the situation soon deteriorated. Blair’s growing involvement and power in the colony
came with neglect of the college. He quarreled (victoriously) with succeeding
royal governors and alienated the grammar schoolmaster. Enrollments shrank
(Blair withdrew his own nephew), and the trustees withheld Blair’s substantial
presidential salary due to lack of progress in fulfilling the charter. Then, in 1705,
the college building burned to the ground, followed shortly by the resignation
of the only teacher.
Barely a decade after its founding, the College of William & Mary was close
to collapse. But it slowly recovered over the next decade. The Indian school was
organized for the first time, fulfilling the obligation of its endowment. It appeared to serve its purpose for a number of years before the unrealistic expectations of the English toward Native Americans became evident. A new master
was retained for the grammar school, although one less reliable than his predecessor. And a new college edifice was slowly raised—­the building that now
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CHAPTER 1
stands in restored form at the College. For a short time (1717–­1721) the college
even managed to retain a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy. But
Blair’s political intrigues caused the college to dissolve into factionalism once
more. For at least two decades, James Blair’s ongoing political battles had made
the founder more of a liability than an asset. However, at this juncture he endeavored to revive the college and fulfill the terms of its charter.
In order to have the charter transferred to the college, thus giving sovereign
authority to the president and faculty, Blair had to obtain the six professors or
masters originally specified. Only in 1729 was he able to make a pretense of doing
so. His most solid appointee was a recent Oxford graduate, William Dawson,
who was made professor of moral philosophy. Dawson filled that post for 14
years and succeeded Blair as president (1643–­1652). The masters of the grammar
and Indian schools also counted. To fill out the faculty he appointed two parish
clergy to the chairs in divinity, although they had no apparent duties. The chair
in natural philosophy was awarded to an Edinburgh graduate who was otherwise occupied on a surveying expedition. On his demise in 1731 a competent
replacement was named, who actually did teach in the college. Historians of the
colonial college doubt that the six charter masters were ever in the same room
together, but on paper they were sufficient to fulfill the terms of the charter.20
In 1729 the royal charter, amended with additional statutes (1727), was transferred from London to Williamsburg.21 The college now had both a grammar
school and a school of philosophy with two qualified teachers. Moreover, since
the college’s founding, Virginia had evolved into a society with growing numbers
of wealthy planter families, now more appreciative of cultural gentility and some
kinds of practical learning. According to the statutes of the college, the grammar
school offered a 4-­year course, capped by an examination at or about age 15. Two
more years of study in the school of philosophy could lead to a bachelor’s degree
(extended to 4 years in 1758). But, in fact, the sons of Virginia had little desire for
so long a course or for formal degrees. Most probably acquired some Latin from
local tutors or ministers and then attended for two or three years in the grammar
school and possibly in philosophy, but apparently none graduated. Nor did the
faculty offer any encouragement for them to do so.22 As for preparing ministers
20 Tate, “Colonial College,” 62–­72.
21 August 15, the date of the transfer, was henceforth celebrated as Transfer Day, an event similar to
commencements at northern colleges.
22 The absence of graduates presents a puzzling contrast with other colonial colleges. Most William
& Mary masters were the product of Oxford colleges, which provided instruction but not degrees. The
university conducted examinations and awarded degrees. Without the sanction of examinations and degrees, instruction was most likely offered and received in a casual manner. Only in 1770 were efforts made
to upgrade the course of study, and the first BA degrees were awarded in 1772: Tate, “Colonial College,” 113.
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T H E A M E R I C A N C O L L E G E , 16 3 6 – 174 0
of the gospel, ordination into the Anglican clergy could be performed only by a
bishop, which meant travel to England. Among early William & Mary students,
only a handful seem to have followed that path, and they all finished their education in England. Total enrollments rose to around 60 in the 1730s and fluctuated
near that level for the rest of the colonial era.
Throughout the history of the colonial college, the grammar school enrolled
the largest number of students. Presumably most of these students would have
been age 11 to 15, and they no doubt set an unfortunate tone for residential
life in the college. The college building also included quarters for philosophy
students, but they were not required to live there. It is difficult to compare
the college course with that in New England or, for that matter, Oxbridge,
the putative model for William & Mary. The grammar school was intended to
prepare students in Latin and Greek for collegiate studies, but apparently not
many proceeded to the school of philosophy. There, all the other subjects of
the collegiate course were taught by the two professors in unknown sequences,
if any. In striking contrast with the northern colleges, tight class cohorts were
entirely absent, as were the recitations that structured students’ daily life. Only
at the end of the colonial period was a regular plan of lectures in place. Before then, the rapid turnover of masters must have precluded a consistent or
complete curriculum.23 In one sense, the College of William and Mary offered
the amount and kind of advanced education that eighteenth-­century Virginia
could assimilate. However, the principal constituencies could not agree on
a formula that met their divergent interests, with consequences that will be
seen below.
CONFLICT AND NEW LEARNING
I N T H E E A R LY C O L L E G E S
The first three colleges of British North America followed the pattern of Reformation Europe, in which universities were territorial organizations under the
combined authority of an established church and the civil state. Each college
was configured somewhat differently but retained the same common elements.
Teaching was under the supervision of members of the clergy, and all learning
was placed in a religious context. Representatives of the established church provided some or all of the external governance of the institution. And representatives of the civil government were involved as overseers at all but Yale. The
colonies provided financial support and had ultimate oversight over the colleges.
23 Robert Polk Thomson, “The Reform of the College of William and Mary, 1763–­1780,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 115, 3 ( June 1971): 187–­213.
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CHAPTER 1
This model of joint church-­state effort worked well enough for the establishment
of these “schools of the Reformation,” as historian Jurgen Herbst has termed
them.24 However, problems soon developed. As new ideas emerged questioning
the reigning dogmas of the churches, the ramifications were quickly transmitted
to the colleges. Further, the ambiguous sharing of clerical and secular authority
proved inherently unstable. Thus, the early histories of these institutions were
characterized not by the unity of church, state, and college, but by conflict and
controversy.
The seventeenth century experienced greater intellectual advancement than
any previous era in human history, marked above all by the scientific revolution,
embodied in the Royal Society of London (f. 1662), and the beginnings of the
Enlightenment, the dominant intellectual movement of the next century.25 Neither of these developments affected the curriculum of colonial colleges for some
time. The arts course was largely frozen in the trivium and what was still largely
Aristotelian philosophy. Moreover, the deeper purpose of the college course and
the overriding preoccupation of the institutions were to demonstrate the truth
of Christianity. The new learning affected attitudes toward religion first, church
polity second, and colleges third.
The new ideas of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries are
best described as the Early Enlightenment, to distinguish them from later,
more vigorous phases. The two intellectual giants who symbolized the movement in England were John Locke (1632–­1704) and Sir Isaac Newton (1642–­
1727). Their achievements were monumental. Newton’s Principia Mathematica
(1689) described the physical laws governing matter and motion and superseded all previous formulations. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) ignited an ongoing reappraisal of how and what the human mind
knows; his Two Treatises on Government (1690) anchored the Whig tradition
of limited monarchy in England and was later an inspiration for the American
Declaration of Independence. For contemporaries, however, the contributions
of both men had a multitude of possible meanings. According to historian
Norman Fiering, “Locke’s philosophy and Newton’s discoveries were important in early America only in highly qualified ways, and neither the Essay . . .
nor the Principia . . . may be considered crucial documents for comprehending
the development of thought in America before about 1735.” This was largely
because the intellectual leaders of New England sought initially “new forms of
integration of reason and religion.” In this quest, Fiering proposes, they were
24 Herbst, From Crisis to Crisis, 3–­16.
25 Peter Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its Ambitions, 1500–­1700, 2nd
ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).
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T H E A M E R I C A N C O L L E G E , 16 3 6 – 174 0
more immediately inspired by a contemporary of the two giants, John Tillotson (1630–­1694).26
Elevated to Archbishop of Canterbury in 1691, Tillotson was known above
all for his widely admired sermons. Published in various forms and editions beginning in 1664, he was considered “not only the best preacher of his age, but
seemed to have brought preaching to perfection.”27 These sermons were probably
the most widely read religious literature in the American colonies from 1690 to
1750, not only for their literary qualities but because they also had a generic appeal that transcended religious dogma. They conveyed two principal ideas. First,
“nature itself, including human nature, is a revelation of God that may be trusted
as an independent source of divine truth.” This idea was consistent with Protestant theology, which had always regarded the universe as a manifestation of God’s
work. Now Newton (or more accurately the popularizers of Newton) had shown
the cosmos to be an even more glorious creation than previously realized. But
with Tillotson the idea of natural religion distanced itself from other Protestant
doctrines. Second, the free exercise of reason could be a guide to religion in itself,
without reference to theological commentary. None other than John Locke furthered these arguments with The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), where reason guided by the New Testament yields the simple moral truths of Christianity.28
Tillotson, whom Locke greatly admired, had also joined reason and revelation by
arguing that “the law of God requires nothing of us, but what is recommended to
us by our own reason.” These sentiments, embellished by Tillotson’s literary flair
and broad appeal, established a foundation for what Fiering calls “philosophical
Anglicanism”—­a broad reorientation of the Church of England toward an inclusive, tolerant posture, otherwise known as latitudinarianism. In America, James
Turner calls this tradition more simply “reasonable religion.”29
Numerous other writers contributed to this movement, but the result was
official endorsement for a benevolent and intelligent deity, whose guidance for
humankind could be known through nature and reason. This was a far cry from
26 Norman Fiering, “The First American Enlightenment: Tillotson, Leverett, and Philosophical
Anglicanism,” New England Quarterly 54, 3 (Sept. 1981): 307–­44, quotes pp. 332, 334. See also, Henry F.
May, The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), esp. 10–­13: May identifies these developments as the beginning of the “Moderate Enlightenment,” which reconciled reason and
Protestant religion and spanned most of the eighteenth century. He identifies the rational Christianity of
Samuel Clarke as foundational, whose influential lectures were given a decade after Tillotson’s death and
developed these themes further: 13–­14.
27 Quoted in Fiering, “First American Enlightenment,” 310n; Tillotson’s sermons were sold to a
publisher after his death for £2,500, the largest sum paid to date for rights to an English book. The fourteen volumes were reprinted as late as 1735.
28 Roger Woolhouse, Locke: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 336–­44.
29 James Turner, Without God, without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 28–­34.
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CHAPTER 1
the vengeful God of Calvinism. For New England Puritans this view was a challenge quite different from the persecution of the Stuart church; it was rather the
challenge of seduction. However, the implications were not apparent until the
end of the century. Before then, even Increase Mather admired “the great and
good Archbishop Tillotson.” And so did Mather’s future nemesis, John Leverett,
who brought these same ideas into Harvard College.30
« « «
H arvar d College , 1685– ­
1 724 . Following the death of President
Chauncy in 1672, Harvard’s weak enrollments were compounded by a series
of short-­term, ineffective leaders and increasing intellectual isolation from England. Its fortunes began to change, however, when Increase Mather, minister of
Boston’s Second Church, accepted the presidency (1685–­1701). Mather was one
of the most learned and prominent figures in the colony—­so prominent, in fact,
that he had little time for the college. He declined to relinquish his pastoral post
or to reside in Cambridge. Moreover, the years of his presidency coincided with
a long-­running constitutional crisis. In an attempt to reorganize the New England colonies, London abolished the original charter of the Massachusetts Bay
Company (1684) and with it the Harvard charter of 1650. The college continued
to operate, as did the colony, but Mather was continually involved in negotiations to resolve this situation, including 4 years spent in London. In the meantime, the governance of the college by Corporation and Overseers was uncertain
at best. The college nevertheless gained renewed vigor under the direction of two
dedicated tutors, John Leverett and William Brattle.
Leverett and Brattle both belonged to prominent Boston families. They were
educated together at the Boston Latin School and Harvard (1680). Appointed
tutors in 1685 and 1686, respectively, they resided in the college and taught all
subjects until both resigned in 1697, Brattle to become pastor of the Cambridge
church and Leverett to rise in public office to Speaker of the House of Representatives. During these years the size of the college roughly doubled,31 but more
importantly the two tutors opened the college to the new ideas of the age, especially those of liberal Anglicans. Given Boston’s frequent intercourse with the
mother country and its growing merchant class, it could scarcely remain isolated
from English thought, but Leverett and Brattle were key agents in implanting
those ideas. They prompted some modernization of the curriculum, with Brattle
30 Quoted in Fiering, “First American Enlightenment,” 340, 314.
31 In the decade before 1685, Harvard averaged ca. twenty-­five students and six annual graduates; in
the 1690s, ca. fifty undergraduates and twelve bachelor’s.
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T H E A M E R I C A N C O L L E G E , 16 3 6 – 174 0
contributing an introductory text for Cartesian logic that was used almost until
the Revolution.32 They probably had a greater impact by setting the intellectual
tone for the college community. At nightly meals masters and divinity students
and other recent graduates joined Leverett and Brattle for stimulating conversation. They thus had a profound influence on numerous Harvard graduates and
future ministers, introducing them especially to “episcopal” literature and philosophical Anglicanism.33 This influence led to the emergence of a distinctly liberal
faction, with consequences for the colony and the college.
The liberal Puritans emerged as a distinct party with the organization of Boston’s fourth church in 1699. This effort was bankrolled by Thomas Brattle, William’s brother, who was also treasurer of Harvard. It gathered liberal Harvard
graduates, including its new minister Benjamin Colman, who had studied in England. The new church remained faithful to much of Puritan theology but broke
decisively with prevailing church practices by relaxing requirements for membership and foregoing religious tests. Inclusiveness, greater doctrinal flexibility, and
the “catholick spirit” better suited the predilections of the city’s growing merchant class, who were also gaining influence in the government. The liberals next
succeeded in ejecting Increase Mather from the Harvard presidency. The pretext
was the long-­simmering issue of mandatory residence in the college. Presented
with an ultimatum, Mather finally moved to Cambridge, but he could endure
it for only 6 months. When he returned to Boston in 1701, the presidency was
considered vacated. His successor, Samuel Willard (1701–­1707), was also unwilling to forego his Boston congregation. Instead, he was appointed vice president
with no residential requirement, merely a promise of regular visits. During these
years the college operated much as it had previously; Leverett’s former students
were tutors, and both Leverett and Brattle were close at hand, residing literally
next door. Upon Willard’s death in 1707, the corporation defied tradition by
electing Leverett, a layman, to a post that had always been filled by Puritan ministers. This act alienated the orthodox Puritans, led by the Mather clan, from the
liberals; but the deal was sealed by the colony governor, who offered to reinstate
the Charter of 1650 if Leverett were made president. In a stroke, Harvard acquired an on-­site leader of enormous stature in the community and resolved the
32 “In nearly every discipline—­logic, metaphysics, ethics and natural philosophy—­the Aristotelian
Scholastic inheritance was largely abandoned”: Fiering, “First American Enlightenment,” 322; however,
Morison considers the elements of the curriculum to have been quite stable: Harvard College, 147; on
Brattle, 192–­93; Thomas Jay Siegel, Governance and Curriculum at Harvard College in the Eighteenth Century, PhD Diss., Harvard University, 1990, 372–­88. Siegel provides a detailed sequel to Morison for issues
of governance and curriculum.
33 Morison, Harvard College, 504–­9; Specifically, they introduced doctrines of rational Christianity of Cambridge Platonist Henry More: Fiering, “First American Enlightenment,” 322–­23; Hoeveler,
Creating the American Mind, 44–­47.
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CHAPTER 1
uncertainties of its governance. These steps established a solid foundation for its
efflorescence in the remainder of the colonial era and beyond.34
To Samuel Eliot Morison he was the “Great Leverett,” who “was steadfast in
preserving the College from the devastating control of provincial orthodoxy . . .
kept it a house of learning under the spirit of religion . . . [and] founded the
liberal tradition of Harvard University.”35 Indeed, his control over the college
was challenged by Puritan conservatives until the end of his presidency. The
greatness of President Leverett (1708–­1724) did not stem from pedagogical or
organizational innovation. Rather, his personal charisma and complete devotion
to the institution served as aegis under which the college prospered, grew, and
changed with the times.
Harvard College roughly doubled in enrollments during the Leverett years.
In 1721 it counted 124 students, including resident graduates. Only Yale and
Harvard attained larger enrollments in the colonial era, and the size of the average American colleges would not exceed this figure until the 1890s. The General Court voted funds for Massachusetts Hall (1720) to accommodate these
students in the college. A good part of this growth apparently came from the
rising merchant class of the region, whose sons often wished above all to become gentlemen. Their presence enlivened extracurricular life at the college with
clubs, the first student periodical, and abundant illicit activities. This behavior
was sufficiently notorious that a 16-­year old Benjamin Franklin satirized these
would-­be gentlemen who left Harvard “as great Blockheads as ever, only more
proud and self-­conceited.” Those destined for the ministry declined from nearly
two-­thirds at the end of Leverett’s tutorship to under one-­half at the end of his
presidency—­still by far the college’s largest constituency.36
Leverett seems to have had less impact on the curriculum as president than
he did as a tutor. That he hired a permanent instructor in Hebrew suggests how
traditional the arts course remained. But within that structure unmistakable
progress occurred. During these years tutors served increasingly lengthy tenures, led by Henry (“Father”) Flynt, who held that post for 55 years, abused by
students and beloved by graduates. Thomas Robie, who tutored from 1713 to
1722, made important contributions to advancing science in the college. His scientific observations brought election to the Royal Society, and he resigned to
practice medicine, which he taught himself. These older and more professional
teachers were more competent than the typical tutors—­recent graduates, usually
34 Hall, Last Puritan, 292–­301; Morison, Harvard College; Morison, Three Centuries, 45–­53.
35 Morison, Three Centuries, 53–­75, quote pp. 74–­75.
36 Morison, Three Centuries, quote p. 61; Burritt, “Professional Distribution”; John D. Burton,
“Collegiate Living and Cambridge Justice: Regulating the Colonial Harvard Student Community in the
Eighteenth Century,” Perspectives on the History of Higher Education, 23 (2003–­2004): 83–­106.
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T H E A M E R I C A N C O L L E G E , 16 3 6 – 174 0
preparing for ministerial careers.37 Of greater significance was the creation of
permanent professorships. This academic milestone was made possible by the
gifts of a London Baptist, Thomas Hollis. At the urging of Benjamin Colman,
now a fellow of the Corporation, Hollis endowed a professorship of divinity
in 1722. Although he stipulated only that the chairholder be accepting of adult
baptism, Harvard’s governors insisted on strict religious tests before appointing Edward Wigglesworth—­further evidence of the limits of “liberal” Puritanism. But Hollis fortunately ignored this slight, and Wigglesworth, during his
41-­year incumbency, subtly chipped away at bedrock Calvinist doctrines. In
1727 Hollis donated a second chair in mathematics and natural philosophy, this
time encouraged by a recent Harvard graduate studying in England, who was
then named to fill it. Isaac Greenwood strengthened the teaching of science and
mathematics during his short tenure (1727–­1738) before succumbing to intemperance; and his successor, John Winthrop (1738–­1779), achieved far more.38
The Hollis professorships gave an American college an intellectual foundation
for the first time. These individuals had a secure position in which to develop
expertise in their subjects and to convey that expertise not only to students but
to the community at large. The eighteenth-­century holders of these chairs thus
played a crucial role in overcoming the outmoded worldview of Puritanism and
bringing the Enlightenment to America.
« « «
Yale , 1718 –­1740. New Haven proved more resistant to intellectual advancement. Boston was a thriving seaport in constant intercourse with England. Many
Harvard graduates, like Colman and Greenwood, traveled to the mother country for further study and there imbibed the prevailing spirit of toleration, reason,
and scientific inquiry. Connecticut remained quite insular, even as its Puritan
homogeneity slowly eroded. In addition, while the transformation of Harvard
had been led by secular leadership on its governing boards, Yale was effectively
under the thumb of its clerical trustees. The congregational church, moreover,
had solidified its internal discipline by adopting the Saybrook Platform in 1709.
Drawn up by church leaders who were also trustees of the Collegiate School,
37 John D. Burton, “The Harvard Tutors: The Beginning of an Academic Profession, 1690–­1825,”
History of Higher Education Annual, 16 (1996): 5–­20; Clifford K. Shipton, New England Life in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 6–­12; Frederick G. Kilgour, “Thomas Robie
(1689–­1729), Colonial Scientist and Physician,” Isis, 30, 3 (Aug. 1939): 473–­90.
38 Morison, Three Centuries, 66–­68; Theodore Hornberger, Scientific Thought in the American Colleges, 1638–­1800 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1945), 44–­51; Hoeveler, Creating the American Mind,
215–­36.
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CHAPTER 1
the platform specified traditional Calvinist articles of faith and established consociations to oversee the individual congregations. Concerned above all with
disorder within their churches, Connecticut Puritans were only dimly aware of
the new ideas of the Moderate Enlightenment, which were closer at hand than
they realized.39
Just 4 years before he secured Elihu Yale’s gift, Jeremiah Dummer had assisted the Collegiate School by gathering a large donation of books (1714). Well
connected himself, he managed to acquire gifts from London’s leading men of
letters, including a second edition of the Principia from Sir Isaac Newton. In
all, he dispatched nine crates of books containing more than 800 volumes. The
school suddenly possessed perhaps the largest and most up-­to-­date library in
the colonies, but given its disorganized state there were few beneficiaries. Early
colonial college libraries were off limits to undergraduates and used chiefly by
master’s or divinity students. However, one recent graduate took a keen interest
and began to peruse the collection.
Samuel Johnson graduated from the Collegiate School in Saybrook in 1714.
He began teaching in nearby Guilford and borrowing books from the new collection. Johnson had a penchant for constructing comprehensive philosophical systems from his student days to his later writings. However, confronting
the new learning was like leaping across centuries from the outdated curriculum he had just studied. He abandoned the geocentric Ptolemaic cosmology
for the Newtonian universe only in 1717, for example. He initially sought to
assimilate the empirical epistemology of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human
Understanding with the teleological systems he learned in college. He next
attacked astronomy by reading the popularizers of Newton, but he quickly
discovered he lacked the mathematical knowledge to read the master. As he
read, Johnson formed discussion groups with nearby teachers and ministers
and continued this practice when he became a tutor at New Haven. Johnson
was a learned but unpopular tutor from 1717 through 1719, quite likely because
he attempted to teach new learning that he did not fully understand himself.
He was forced to leave to ensure internal peace for the new rector, Timothy
Cutler, and took a post as minister in nearby West Haven. As he continued his
reading, the focus shifted to philosophical Anglicans like Tillotson. Johnson’s
reading circle now included Rector Cutler, who as a 1701 graduate of Harvard
would have been more familiar with the new learning and had already begun
flirting with Anglicanism.40
39 Warch, School of the Prophets, 52–­57; Hoeveler, Creating the American Mind, 55–­62.
40 Joseph J. Ellis, The New England Mind in Transition: Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, 1696–­1772
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 34–­75.
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T H E A M E R I C A N C O L L E G E , 16 3 6 – 174 0
At the 1722 graduation, Cutler concluded prayers with a passage from the
Anglican liturgy. In doing so he signaled his apostasy from the Congregational
Church and acceptance of the great enemy of Puritanism, the English Church.
He was joined by Samuel Johnson and five others, only one of whom followed
through with his apostasy. Subsequently examined by the trustees and then by
the governor, Cutler, Johnson, and a Yale tutor stood their ground. They resigned their positions and soon set sail for England to become Anglican clergy.
The specific issue that had prompted the break was their doubts of the legitimacy
of Puritan ordination rather than ordination by a bishop in the apostolic succession. However, behind this recondite theological issue lay the weight of the new
learning, rational Christianity, and natural religion.41
The apostasy at Yale reverberated throughout New England, giving false
hopes to Anglicans and unwarranted despair to Puritans. As for Yale, the trustees
reacted predictably by imposing church discipline: They declared that all college
officers would henceforth be required to swear acceptance of the Confession of
Faith of the Saybrook Platform.42 As far as its governors were concerned, Yale
was a sectarian college. And, for a time it prospered as such. Elisha Williams
(1726–­1739) was installed as the new rector, and for his tenure Yale at last had
stability to grow and prosper. Williams was recognized as an admirable college
leader. The number of graduates rose by half to average 18 per year, and the colony provided ample support. A church-­state consensus upheld Puritan orthodoxy, which now emphasized a heightened guard against “Arminianism.” This
doctrine implied that salvation could be achieved in some measure though good
works and had always been rejected vehemently by Calvinists in favor of predestination. But Arminianism was now the de facto creed of the Anglican Church,
if not liberal Puritans. When Williams resigned to follow other pursuits, the
trustees chose as successor Thomas Clap (H. 1722), a young Connecticut minister who had distinguished himself through fierce opposition to Arminianism.
Clap (1740–­1766) was the first Yale rector to have a normal succession and the
first as well to assume the direction of a tranquil and settled college. It would
not remain so for long. Clap would spend his tenure in a futile struggle to uphold Puritan orthodoxy—­to preserve a school of the Reformation in an age of
Enlightenment.
41 Existing historiography emphasizes Samuel Johnson, his reading of the Dummer collection, and
his subsequent reading circles for the apostasy. However, it seems more likely that Cutler led the actual
break, possibly after receiving assurances from Anglicans of appointment as minister to the new Anglican
Church being erected in Boston. In that position, Cutler subsequently became a strident conservative,
alienating both Harvardians and liberal Anglicans: Shipton, New England Life, 79–­101.
42 Ironically, the same year that Harvard imposed a rather superficial religious test on one individual, Edward Wigglesworth, Yale imposed a more stringent test on all future teachers.
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« « «
Willi a m & M a ry. The Virginia college felt no such tension between Calvinism and philosophical Anglicanism. James Blair was aligned with church liberals who triumphed in the Glorious Revolution and even corresponded with
John Locke. Later, William & Mary would embrace enlightenment thinking as
a matter of course. However, new learning and old learning were scarcely issues
when the institution was only a grammar school; nor did sympathy toward the
new learning spare it from conflict afterward. Rather, an ambiguous governance
structure and the political fault lines of the colony produced repeated, debilitating confrontations.
James Blair seems to have set a pattern with his clashes with the colony’s governors, which were symptomatic of a latent antagonism between the interests
of the Anglican clergy and those of native Virginia planters. After a period of
relative calm during the aged Blair’s final years and the tenure of his successor,
William Dawson, this conflict intensified. The charter accorded the president
and faculty control over the college. Once a full faculty was resident, they became more assertive. Most were products of Oxford colleges, where they had
absorbed a strong sense of entitlement. Being members of the Anglican clergy,
answerable to the Bishop of London, gave them additional independence. They
provoked the ire of governors by taking stridently partisan positions on local
political issues. In the college, they defied prohibitions against marriage and
ministering to local parishes for extra income. They also resisted residing in the
college and refused to take responsibility for disciplining the (mostly grammar
school) students. The Board of Visitors, representing the Virginia political elite,
held powers of appointment but was otherwise frustrated by its inability to intervene in the operations of the college. The 1750s and 1760s witnessed a continual battle between these two sides. Typical of this stalemate, a confrontation
in 1757 culminated with the Board of Visitors firing the entire faculty, only to
have their action reversed on appeal to London 6 years later. Both sides invoked
the interests of the college: the faculty claimed the right to control teaching and
students, while the Visitors sought to rectify what they considered low standards
and lax discipline. Ineffectual and self-­serving actors on both sides exacerbated
these conflicts, but basically their differences were fundamental.
The William & Mary charter envisioned a school of the Reformation in
which the interests of state and church were joined, but this unity of purpose
was never achieved in colonial Virginia. Instead, the Anglican clergy and the
planters who dominated the Virginia polity each pursued their own vested interests. Worse, neither side’s interests supported the integrity of an institution
of advanced learning. The faculty defined its role as “training up Youth, who
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T H E A M E R I C A N C O L L E G E , 16 3 6 – 174 0
are intended to be qualified for any of the three learned Professions, or to become Gentlemen, and accomplished Citizens.”43 Yet the college prepared few
“Ministers of the Gospel,” as specified in the charter, and those few finished their
training elsewhere; also, it taught neither medicine nor law. Students had no
incentive to complete a college course even if one had been defined. For the colony’s elite families, the college assumed a purely cultural role, serving as a finishing
school where their sons acquired the patina of gentlemen. They too had no need
for college degrees. Only at the end of the colonial era did the Virginians take an
interest in raising curricular standards and granting degrees.
This tardy development can be seen in the contrasting experiences of two
of the college’s most accomplished citizens. Thomas Jefferson, after a rigorous
preparation in an academy, came to the college at age 16 for a leisurely 2 years
(1760–­1762), which happened to be a hiatus in the faculty wars. He studied
classics, philosophy, and law but otherwise had a student experience like no one
else. Jefferson was essentially tutored by the lone professor of philosophy, William Small, a rare noncleric who was aloof from the church’s battles. Jefferson
often joined his professor at the governor’s table for “rational and philosophical
conversations.” Jefferson treasured this experience but also seems to have left the
college convinced of the need for its complete restructuring.44 Just 10 years later,
James Madison, second cousin to the future U.S. president and subsequently
president of the college, received the first bachelor’s degree awarded by William
& Mary. He had studied at the college for 4 years and was a mature 23 years
old in 1772. By that date considerable agreement existed on the desirability of
separating the grammar school and expanding the collegiate offerings.45 Reform
would await the Revolution, but Virginia would persist with its own distinctive
interpretation of American higher education.
T H E E M B RYO N I C A M E R I C A N CO LLEG E
The college founders of the first century had sought to re-­create the English patterns of higher education with which they were familiar, but the small scale of
operation, limited resources, scarcity of qualified teachers, and closeness of external governors all skewed the development of the colleges. These factors made the
three original colleges differ from each other, but they nevertheless shared similarities of mission, aspiration, and operations. By 1740 these, in turn, produced
43 Faculty statement of 1770 attributed to John Camm: Tate, “Colonial College,” 116.
44 Mark R. Wenger, “Thomas Jefferson, the College of William and Mary, and the University of
Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 103, 3 ( July 1995): 339–­74, quote p. 359.
45 Tate, “Colonial College,” 112–­20. See below, chapter 2.
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CHAPTER 1
in embryonic form the distinctively American patterns of collegiate education
and governance.
The American model of a strong president under the authority of an external governing board with a relatively weak faculty was the product of evolution
rather than design. The starting point for this process lay with the efforts of
Henry Dunster and James Blair to design quite similar structures of governance.
The Oxbridge colleges were largely controlled by their masters and permanent
fellows, subject to the oversight, if any, of a Visitor. Accordingly, Dunster devised
a Harvard Corporation consisting of the president, treasurer, and five fellows,
who he assumed would in the future be the teachers in the college. The William
& Mary charter similarly placed control of the college in the hands of the president and masters. Both charters gave broad, loosely defined powers to the external boards: the Overseers had the right to review and approve all actions of the
Harvard Corporation, and the Visitors had authority to enact laws and rules for
William & Mary. Behind both boards stood the governments of the respective
colonies, which became involved on infrequent but important occasions.
The original presidents dominated their fledgling institutions for lack of alternatives, but other possibilities soon emerged. William & Mary was atypical
in acquiring more or less permanent masters by the 1730s. But these individuals soon contended for control of the college, challenging at different times
the authority of the president, the Visitors, and even the governor. Harvard
before Leverett and Yale before Elisha Williams endured extended periods of
weak or absent heads. In those cases tutors basically conducted day-­to-­day affairs but never acquired governing powers. Unlike the fellows in the Oxbridge
colleges, the tutors/fellows did not have permanent posts. They were essentially
candidates for future positions, usually as ministers. For this reason, local dignitaries were recruited to also be fellows of the corporation. By controlling appointments, presidents could assure themselves of a cooperative board. Leverett
took this approach after the charter was reinstated, but then unusual circumstances found the college with three “career” tutors who preferred the college
to a pulpit—­Flynt, Robie, and an ex-­minister, Nicholas Sever. When the latter
was not appointed to the corporation, he launched a prolonged campaign to
have tutors automatically named as fellows. Had he succeeded, Harvard might
have evolved toward faculty governance—­a discouraging prospect considering
the self-­serving rule of fellows at Oxbridge colleges and the subsequent example
of William & Mary.
Instead, the American pattern of strong college presidents began to crystallize with Leverett’s presidency. After the long drift under absentee heads, he solidified the operations of the college and foreshadowed the dominant role of
presidents: “Leverett did not articulate the separate functions of the college
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T H E A M E R I C A N C O L L E G E , 16 3 6 – 174 0
government, preferring instead to place himself at the center of the governing
system and to exercise all functions himself.”46 For most of his tenure, he worked
with a friendly corporation and minimized the opportunities for Overseers’ inputs. Only in the last years, during the Sever affair, did this change. The Overseers became far more intrusive, even conducting a formal visitation in 1723. The
Sever controversy also embroiled the college in colony politics—­one of the potential liabilities of external governance. Although Leverett’s death stilled this
controversy, the president and Overseers contended for authority throughout
the colonial period, but the relative authority of president and corporation
largely endured. This pattern of strong presidents was confirmed at Yale in a different manner.
Connecticut largely followed Cotton Mather’s advice in establishing a “school
of the churches” with a single, clerical governing board, as they sought to avoid
the ascendancy of secular interests that was occurring at Harvard. Even so, the
colony repeatedly intervened in college crises. Preponderant trustee power over
the institution produced dismal results. The college head was only designated
“rector,” not president. Having the college run by tutors brought discontent and
ultimately disintegration. Stability was achieved only when an effective head,
Elisha Williams, was in place; but the rector’s office was apparently not attractive
enough to retain him. Finally with Thomas Clap, Yale obtained a powerful campus leader. Clap, in fact, wrote a new charter incorporating the “President and
Fellows of Yale College in New Haven” (1745), thus giving the president a seat on
the board. Although the new title changed little in daily operations, it empowered President Clap for the forceful role he would fulfill for the next 2 decades.
The American college president evolved as a complement to powerful external governors and weak, temporary teachers. The external governing boards
represented the social support that sustained the colleges. Originally, at least for
Massachusetts and Connecticut, the colleges drew support from unified Puritan
communities, but over time that support increasingly reflected powerful groups
within those communities. In either case, a strong executive figure was the necessary intermediary to keep the college faithful to the interests of its patrons—­a
role the independent faculty of William & Mary disdained. Events also seemed
to prove that a strong resident president was needed for internal management.
In the hierarchical societies of the English colonies, a president of high social
standing and dignified personal bearing seemed a necessity. A person of equivocal stature could be mercilessly harassed by socially superior students, as sometimes happened to tutors. The president’s prestige was, in fact, a critical factor in
upholding respect for the entire “immediate government” of the college. Finding
46 Siegel, “Governance and Curriculum,” 20.
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CHAPTER 1
an appropriate figure to fill this position was a grave problem for the early colleges and a persistent difficulty throughout the colonial era.
For students the distinctive experience of the American college, at least the
northern ones, was what Cotton Mather called the collegiate way of living and
the strong loyalties of class cohorts. Residential colleges seemed necessary to anchor the schools as permanent institutions. Colleges without them tended to
fare poorly in the first century (Yale) and later. These structures were meant to
copy the Oxbridge colleges, but they quickly acquired a distinct character. The
tutors who also dwelled there were young recent graduates, unlike the scholarly
fellows in England. Each tutor assumed instruction for a single class of students
rather than a self-­selected group. These individuals went through their entire
academic exercises as a unit and thus acquired a strong sense of solidarity that
often endured through their lifetimes. By the same token, hazing and class rivalry tended to discourage bonds across classes. In addition, class cohesion allowed the curriculum to assume a standardized form for each separate class.
Both the objectives and the methods of seventeenth-­century colleges had
been refined for centuries but are quite remote from modern education. The
colleges took as their fundamental purpose that “the main end of [a student’s]
life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, Joh. 17.3.”47
For Puritan educators, everything in the world was an idea in the mind of
God—­a single unified body of knowledge, which man in his fallen state could
grasp only imperfectly. They assumed, consistent with Aristotle, that everything
had a purpose and that knowledge of purpose could be deduced through logic.48 This approach had been most fully developed by Peter Ramus, a sixteenth-­
century French humanist, in his Technologia. This all-­encompassing system of
logic reduced all knowledge to 1,267 propositions. As taught in the colleges, the
Technologia was the system of logical deduction that progressively revealed the
mind of God. Students had to master this approach in order to earn a bachelor’s
degree and become scholars in their own right. Hence, students had a great deal
to learn before they could “know God and Jesus Christ,” and the curriculum was
designed to impart this knowledge.
47 New England’s First Fruits (London: 1643), quoted in Morison, Founding of Harvard, 434; the
Yale college laws stated: “Every student shall consider the main end of his study to wit to know God in
Jesus Christ and answerably to lead a Godly sober life”: Warch, School of the Prophets, 191. The following account of curriculum draws on Morison, Harvard College; Siegel, “Governance and Curriculum”;
Morgen, Gentle Puritan, Warch, School of the Prophets; and Carl A. Hangartner, Movements to Change
American College Teaching, 1700–­1830, PhD Diss., Yale University, 1955.
48 Morgan quotes as example: “The end of the Sunne, Moone, and stares is, to serve the Earth;
and the end of the Earth is, to bring forth Plants, and the end of Plants is, to feed the beasts”: Gentle
Puritan, 54.
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T H E A M E R I C A N C O L L E G E , 16 3 6 – 174 0
In most basic terms, the college course can be seen as imparting three kinds
of learning—­linguistic skills, logical argument, and general knowledge. Latin, of
course, was the language of learning and instruction. Proper preparation was the
prerequisite for college studies, and polishing these skills occupied much of the
first year. Greek was largely employed to read the New Testament, and Hebrew
was limited to reading and translating the Psalms. The study of these languages
thus complemented the religious mission of the colleges. When students made
sufficient progress in the “tongues,” they began the study of logic, which was the
focus of the second year. The aim was to develop the skill to engage in syllogistic
[using logical deduction] disputations. These were stylized debates, conducted
in Latin, in which students rehearsed arguments for and against propositions,
largely drawn from the Technologia. Disputations continued during the third
and fourth years, incorporating material drawn from the philosophical subjects
covered in those years.49 These exercises were central to the curriculum and featured in graduation ceremonies. For commencement, students would publish
a list of theses that they were prepared to defend, thus demonstrating their fitness as scholars. It is largely from these lists that historians have deduced what
was taught in the early colleges. Finally, general knowledge was drawn from
Aristotle’s three philosophies—­mental, moral, and natural—­and subsequent
elaborations. This was the content knowledge that informed the propositions
of the Technologia. Various subjects might be incorporated. However, content
knowledge in this scheme played a limited role, and for that reason advances in
knowledge did little to drive change in the curriculum until the last years of the
colleges’ first century.
The organization of the curriculum reveals how the basic aims were accomplished. Dunster, who had to teach all three classes himself, treated a separate
subject each day. Monday and Tuesday were devoted to disputations and philosophy; Greek and Hebrew filled the next two days; Friday was devoted to
rhetoric and declamations, Saturday, to divinity, and the Sabbath was observed
on Sunday. This basic pattern endured and was reproduced at Yale as well. At
the end of Leverett’s presidency, disputations were still held on Mondays and
Tuesdays, and rhetoric and divinity occupied Fridays and Saturdays, respectively.
Friday’s declamations were an important exercise. Each student in turn had to
compose (and later memorize) a brief Latin oration and “declaim” before the
whole college once every 6 or 8 weeks. These speeches were written and turned
in as well, thus developing both oratory and composition. Content knowledge
was conveyed to students in lectures, usually by the president, and recitations
were conducted by the tutors. Originally, when books were scarce and expensive,
49 For example, the Harvard plan of study for 1723: Morison, Harvard College, 146–­47.
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CHAPTER 1
recitations were intended to repeat and clarify materials from lectures or texts
that students had copied. As books became more widely available, tutors used
recitations for oral questioning, in which students had to demonstrate that they
had mastered the day’s lessons. Hence, schedules usually allotted 2 hours of
preparation time before each recitation. The material for which the tutors were
responsible—­linguistic skills, learning logic, and fairly basic subjects—­did not
require advanced or specialized knowledge and thus should have been within
the competence of inexperienced recent graduates to teach, if not very well. Tutors apparently might or might not bother to explain the material in recitations.
In fact, tutors who attempted to push students beyond these basics, such as
Samuel Johnson, proved more unpopular than those who offered no guidance.
In recitations all students were expected to master, or memorize, the lesson (no
scholar left behind); students had opportunities to display their “genius” in declamations and especially disputations.
The fundamental historical question is how and when the college course
began to incorporate the new learning and a more secular outlook. To appreciate why this process was so slow, one must recognize the effectiveness of this
course for its primary purpose as well as its deep immersion in Puritan Protestantism. First, the content and the exercises of the course gave graduates the cultural grounding and the oratorical skills for future careers. Second, even before
formal training for the ministry, all graduates were saturated with Christian
doctrines.
Consider the fixtures of the college course. Each day included morning and
evening chapel, which consisted of prayers and scripture. Saturday and Sunday
were devoted entirely to religion. On Saturdays students heard lectures on scripture or divinity and recited on classic works of Puritan theology. On Sundays
they heard two sermons, which they later had to explicate. Work in Greek and
Hebrew focused almost entirely on the Bible as students learned to translate
passages of the New Testament back and forth from English, Latin, and Greek.
And the ubiquitous disputations reflected the theocentric propositions of the
Technologia. This grounding in Puritan doctrines prepared graduates to serve the
“church and civil state” but particularly the church. The majority of students
who attended Harvard and Yale in the first century undoubtedly aspired to the
ministry. The proportion that attained pulpits, cited before, actually undercounts these aspirants, since it fails to account for those with unknown careers
and an appreciable number, like Flint and Robie, who prepared for the ministry
but did not obtain a pulpit.
Given this rigid and time-­honored structure, new knowledge was not easily
incorporated. A consensus exists among historians that the new learning only
began to make significant inroads at Harvard and Yale in the 1720s and that
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meaningful change in the college course occurred after 1740.50 During those years
the gradual acceptance of new ideas along with the decline of Ramean thinking
can be charted in commencement theses. Acceptance of the Newtonian revolution and experimental science is most readily documented. These doctrines did
not encounter philosophical barriers but rather a scarcity of individuals capable
of fully comprehending and utilizing them. At Harvard the foundation seems
to have been laid by tutor Robie. He became a self-­taught Newtonian and was
also responsible for the acquisition of philosophical apparatus. These activities seem to have occurred toward the latter years of his tutorship, when he no
doubt taught Newtonian disciples Thomas Clap (H. 1722) and Isaac Greenwood
(H. 1721). The latter acquired much deeper knowledge by studying in London
from 1724 to 1726. As the first Hollis Professor of Natural Philosophy in 1727, he
was a committed Newtonian who brought the new science to the college and the
public. He advanced the woeful teaching of mathematics in particular and employed the college’s growing collection of instruments for experiments. When
John Winthrop succeeded Greenwood in the Hollis professorship (1739–­1779),
the new science was not only a permanent part of the curriculum, but experiment and observation were accepted as the means to access an open and growing
body of knowledge. Yale, which began the century in far more benighted condition than Harvard, soon caught up. Newton was incorporated into the course by
1730, and in 1734 rector Williams led a concerted effort to acquire philosophical
apparatus. His successor, Thomas Clap, was an enthusiastic proponent of Newtonian science and especially devoted to astronomy.
The basic ideas of John Locke were more difficult to assimilate since his
emphasis on empiricism challenged not only the Technologia, but the more
advanced rationalism of Descartes. However, Lockean perspectives, or at least
the spirit of empiricism, were just as necessary as philosophical apparatus for
opening inquiry to observation and experiment and for challenging adherence
to a fixed body of knowledge. A turning point was the English publication in
1725 of a logic text by Isaac Watts, a dissenter and scholar well known to the
American colleges. Watts’ Logick: Or, The Right Use of Reason incorporated
basic Lockean views into a more traditional framework but still highlighted
key concepts like the importance of experience as a source of new truth. By the
1730s Locke had become part of the curriculum at both Yale and Harvard. In
1743, Harvard students were assigned Locke’s Essay itself, which quickly became standard practice.
50 Morison, Harvard College, 139–­284; Siegel, “Governance and Curriculum,” 155–­468; Warch,
School of the Prophets, 186–­249; Morgan, Gentle Puritan, 47–­57; Hornberger, Scientific Thought. See also
chapter 2.
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CHAPTER 1
These developments were important in themselves but also symptomatic of a
larger transformation taking place. The new learning of the eighteenth century
was beginning to penetrate the American colleges, not as triumphal doctrines
but as additional materials in an increasingly cluttered course of study. As colonial historian Edmund Morgan observed: “Students were not presented with
opposing views and asked to choose between them. Instead they were expected
to assimilate Aristotelian rhetoric, Ramist theology, Berkeleyan metaphysics,
and diluted Newtonian physics. These were all incompatible in varying degrees
and on different levels. . . . [I]t would have required a real genius merely to ascertain the precise points of conflict among the various parts of the Yale curriculum.”51 Or Harvard’s, for that matter. However, at the end of their first century,
American colleges had transcended the closed world of Puritan theology and
were about to embark on a new Age of Enlightenment.
51 Morgan, Gentle Puritan, 56.
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